It is not at first that our hearts feel the full force of a blow which breaks them in pieces: we do not easily comprehend how a few hours or moments can have made us so utterly wretched; ’tis only by degrees that our thoughts, measuring the extent of an irrevocable calamity, ascertain its existence and its magnitude: then rush forth regret and lamentation, then the images of past joys surround us like demons assuming beloved shapes to torture us more keenly; and those deadly words, _lost, lost for ever_! resounding perpetually thro’ our souls, fill them with desolation and despair. Pale and motionless, Sebastian sat with his head leaning on his hand, gazing on that wide ocean which had entombed Kara Aziek: even yet, his senses were not quite awake; nay, they seemed to have fallen back into that trance out of which they had transiently started.--His dull eyes saw not the wistful ones of his dumb companion, who sensible to his master’s grief, lay moaning before him: nothing rouzed him till some fragments of wreck floating on shore gave birth to hope. Again the face of Sebastian shone with animation, his nerves were new-strung, he called to Barémel, and flew rather than ran towards the sea.--Every where he beheld broken masts and yards, mixed with dead bodies; some were already washed on shore, others borne in with the tide: at that afflicting sight he averted his head and groaned heavily. Alas! it appeared his destiny to be for ever surrounded by destruction!-- He traversed the sands and shore in vain, he searched the rocks and their caverns, he sent Barémel into the waves for every object but faintly discernible; Barémel only brought him Kara Aziek’s shawl: at this sight his fortitude ceased, he snatched the sad relic, while burning drops rained from his eyes--she had perished then, she had lost her life for him!--since but for his unhappy sake she would never have consented to be the Basha’s wife, never have braved the sea, never have met so disastrous a death. Overcome with these convictions, the unfortunate prince held the shawl to his lips, and remained in the same attitude with his face enveloped in it, alternately pursuing in thought the body of Aziek to the hideous depths of ocean, or following with trembling anxiety her pure spirit into the courts of Heaven. CHAP. VII. In this state of abstraction, the King was perceived by a groupe of natives, who had come to the strand, in hope of plundering such vessels as they might find wrecked there; it cost them no trouble to make him their prisoner; the formidable Sebastian had not then any care for himself.--having explained to them as well as the difference of their provincial Moresco would permit, that he had been cast on their shore by the late storm, and was consequently too much enfeebled for great exertion, they were induced to let him walk slowly.